And Miles To Go Before I Sleep, The Remix
by Gogol
Summary: "Books have weight and density unrelated to their physical realities; in large quantities- their concentrated hope a concentrated mass- they warp the spirit." A look at Aziraphale and Crowley immediately after the burning of the Library of Alexandria.


A/N: A remix of And Miles To Go Before I Sleep, by Aviss (archiveofourown[dot]org[slash]works[slash]62970).

The thing is.

The thing is that angels exist inside time. For angels the universe is broken into two halves. What was, and what will be.

For angels, there is always the possibility of what will be being too late.

So angels stay away from the Earth, which is full of things that have a too late, as it were, built in. And if they can't stay away from Earth, they wear their assigned mortal bodies like a human child would wear that horrible cardigan, made years ago by his blind grandmother, on the days when she visits: grudgingly, hyperconscious of the friction between cheap wool and tender skin. Not that holy ectoplasm can really be compared to skin any more than the process of possessing a body can be compared to the process of squeezing into even the tightest of cardigans, but you get the point. They do not get attached. It's just- how it is. Part of their natures. His plan for them.

That's the theory, anyway. In Aziraphale's head it seems like a distant point on the horizon.

"Too late," he murmurs.

It is night-time in Alexandria. There are a lot of people out and about on this night, for reasons that mostly have to do with their houses being on fire: but no one hears him, because he is coasting a few hundred feet above the burning port city on a plume of hot air.

He says it anyway. It seems like something that ought to be mentioned aloud.

He adds "Damn it," which doesn't. It's certainly rather satisfying, though. And- technically- allowed, since he has someone in mind.

There's exactly one demon on duty in the city, in a tavern fairly far from the burning docks. Aziraphale perceives his presence in the much same way that a PET scan will, two thousand years from now, detect where the tumors are in the tissues of a patient with cancer: a question of side effects and things- processes- that do not belong, evil oozing like excess glucose from corrupted cells.

He goes, tipping his wings up.

(The winds are all headed inland tonight.)

The demon turns out to be Crawley. Aziraphale recognizes him from above. He is slouched elaborately on a pile of cushions he must have materialized for himself in the courtyard, and unblindfolded, for once: Aziraphale supposes that none of the screaming bystanders outside or the morose ones nursing drinks inside currently care about such small and abstract horrors as the tint of a stranger's eyes or the shape of a stranger's pupils.

He should have known, really. They have run into each other before.

His hand itches for the handle of his sword.

Its balance was always a little off, and the most he'd accomplished with it while he had it was embarrassing self-injury. But the clear red shine of firelight on the mirrored flat of the blade, like a thin coating of still-warm and -liquid blood pumped from a major artery*: that Aziraphale feels he could have trusted, in this place. At this time. And when it flamed it was undeniably impressive, transparent blue and red tongues coiling up to its hilt like ambitious serpents who'd come up with the bright idea of cutting out the middle man in the whole forbidden-fruit-picking process. He could have used that. He is not particularly impressive himself but he wants, very much, to make an impression.

-  
*Poets will insist on getting the blood-red thing wrong. Dip a sword in blood and what you get, like as not, is a thick coating of what looks like mud, or in the worst cases, tar. More stylish effects require time and effort and a ready supply of people whose families are not likely to miss them, because no one gets it right the first time. You can't expect to just stab someone and have your weapon of choice come out the other side with a nice candy-apple gloss. That would be ridiculous.

He descends ungracefully, stumbling as he lands, his head full of smiting and reflected fires.

Someone says: "Foul fiend, art thou responsible for this heinous deed?"

Aziraphale realizes only belatedly that the voice is in fact his, but he decides he is a little proud of the line. Maybe, he thinks, he's finally gotten the righteousness routine down, after four thousand years of giving out polite and helpful suggestions.

Crawley looks up with infuriating calm. Aziraphale briefly entertains the thought that he's had the snappy response startled out of him, and is simply trying to maintain appearances; then he realizes that Crawley isn't answering because he's busy chewing on a bite of honey cake. He grinds his teeth. Around them, the world is solid noise, such as you could cut blocks from to sell to lazy torturers*.

Through it he feels them still. The books. Dying on their shelves. His hand forms an uncomfortable fist.

In a just and fair universe, he thinks, clearly, his rage really ought to be enough to turn the Library he carries in his head to ash. Instead it only brightens- sharpens- the remembered architecture until he can see the scrolls when he closes his eyes, as vivid as the vision of a prophet who's just had some of the really good mushrooms. And he can see himself unrolling them, the fine grain of the parchment against his fingertips, words opening before his eyes: like stepping out from under a low ceiling to a courtyard's square of open sky.

(If he breathes, he will be able to taste the scorched flakes. Their husks are the substance of this sky, now, not a questionable metaphor; written in particulate black across the night. But Aziraphale is careful. He does not breathe. He pulls what oxygen his body needs into its cells directly: thin air out of thin air.)

-  
* There is considerable demand for good screamers among head torturers, Inquisitors, etc. It's a tiring job, after all, and sometimes a man just needs to sit back in the hottest hours of the afternoon and take a break. But whoever ordered that the prisoner be shown the special machines is rarely understanding on this point; hence, screamers, who can keep up appearances for any zealous client who might be listening outside the thick oaken doors, while the torturer in question is snoring quietly or enjoying the lunch Mrs. Torturer made for him that morning with loving care. A block of concentrated sound would, for obvious reasons, work equally well.

The Library of Alexandria contains- contained- tens of thousands of books. Hundreds of thousands of scrolls, wrapped around handsome handles and shelved in long rows that rose to heights that needed ladders for even the tallest nearby slave to get one down for you. Across the open circular space the walls of books described, sun slanted down in pale shafts of light, brightening the books' dust. There was a smell to it: dry and old and cedar-sweetened, and hot.

Under the smell of the light were sound, and motion. The Library was a busy institution: visiting scholars gathered in its halls and reading rooms, and with them came eddies of conversation, footsteps like streamlets, breaking and coming together again. But in Aziraphale's head it is empty because he liked it empty. Once he found the quiet corners and sat in the watery bright stillness. With effort he could feel that time had been surgically removed from such crannies, change boxed and set aside. When he had no assignment he would stay, for weeks, taking his favorite hours and wearing them until they wore through. He did not move during those weeks. He nudged any would-be explorers of his area to other corridors. And he maintained the same exquisite control over his body that was coming in so terribly handy now; he dragged the hairs of his jaw back into their follicles, and ground any growth off his beautiful nails on oxygen molecules, and sharpened the creased pleats of his tunic lest they soften from his flesh's humidity, and he derived rather silly joy from it. His power over that compressed world.

Books have weight and density unrelated to their physical realities; in large quantities- their concentrated hope a concentrated mass- they warp the spirit. There they were his center of gravity and his star.

The place of the cure of the soul, it was called.

Consider it.

In those days he learned everything there was to learn about the Library. The materials used in its construction, the different inks used by different scribes; the most common grammatical errors of the mathematicians, and the most egregious logical fallacies of the philosophers.

And oh, dear Lord, but he wants to either have or have not. He wants to wash this suddenly useless knowledge from himself.

Please, he thinks, in the hanging moment, answerless and remembering. Moderately doomed.

"Oh," Crawley says, eventually, swallowing. "It's you."

He takes the shallow bowl of wine at his elbow and drinks deeply, baring his throat a little. Aziraphale contemplates the difficulties involved in strangulation, and decides, regretfully, against it; he is not, in all honesty, entirely sure how the process works, and Crawley will probably do something inconvenient while he is working out the details if he tries.

"Want to sit down and have a drink?" the demon adds, with a mocking smile.

"Crawley," Aziraphale growls. Or, well, he hopes it's a growl. Spiritually, it's a growl.

Crawley's gaze shifts sideways. He raises his eyebrows. "It wasn't me. I just woke up. And it's Crowley now, by the way."

Aziraphale ignores the second part and tries to ignore the first. But Crawley does, in fact, look like he just woke up: there are classically, touchingly mortal, ah, little blobs of drying yellow goo in the corners of his eyes, and his hair is mussed, normally unthinkable unless he's been on* a horse recently. And his aura carries none of the satisfaction of a temptation well conducted. There is a trace of enjoyment, but that is probably just a healthy appreciation for the chaos unfolding.

Aziraphale bites back a second 'damn', because this time he really doesn't have an excuse.

-  
*Or violently off one, if you want to think of it that way.

"It wasn't you?" he says, slowly.

"No."

"You're not lying?" He sounds a little desperate, even to himself.

Crawley tilts his head to the side, perhaps listening for something, or doing measurements in his head. His stare focused on Aziraphale through the lens of what goes unsaid, here.

"No," he says, almost gently. "I'm not."

The nausea rises, then, submerging his anger in the unwholesome citrus bitterness of bile. Human bodies are not designed to sustain intense emotion for very long, and Aziraphale is easier in his body than perhaps any other angel in existence, which has its downsides. He collapses onto the cushions next to Crawley. "They're burning books," he says, burying his face in his soft empty hands. From behind his splayed fingers he watches their parallel shadows flicker in what uneven orange light filters in from above.

"I know," Crawley says.

Although he does not hiss, his cadences are those of a snake in the dark. Amazing even the vowels have scales, Aziraphale thinks. He lifts his head, and takes one of the bowls and turns it, back and forth, the liquid sloshing gently. He drains it.

"Lots of books," he says, muffled, aware that this is as inadequate a description as ever there was.

"I know," Crawley says. His dark face is unreadable around his smirk, which looks more habitual than anything. (And when, Aziraphale wonders idly, did he begin sorting smirks from smirks? Not that it matters a bit. Here and now. Not that anything matters, really.) "Can't you..." He pauses. "Do anything." There is no upwards inflection: it isn't a question, as such.

"No," Aziraphale says, because he can't. He can't do anything and he can't smite anyone. "I can't. It's too late" (he finds it harder to say, the second time) "to intervene."

Crawley's gaze, flat and reptilian, slides off him, which is a mercy or at least a decent facsimile thereof, demons technically not being capable of mercy in any form.

"I'll need more wine," Aziraphale says, after a wordless space.

"Of course," Crawley says, and smiles, his teeth sharp as something broken. He passes the amphora. It is surprisingly heavy: a cool comforting weight in his hands.

Aziraphale glares at it, and drinks straight from its flared lip. The scarring heat of the alcohol is- familiar.

He swallows.

An hour or so later, the columns of smoke they can see over the rooftops have begun drifting west, much like his consonants. Aziraphale tells Crawley: "I thah' books were... okay. Nassuch a bad choice. Not tha' I really, really chose them you know but I mean. Worsh things out there, right? To get, whatsit. Attached."

"I don't see it, angel. Papyrus issss fragile," Crawley says. From where Aziraphale sprawls, he looks suspiciously sober, not to mention doubled. Aziraphale glares at him. Them. The Crawleys. They edge into the corner of the rough clay walls, all four hands up, which brings back really bad memories of that one time with Kali, among other things. "Hey, don't shoot the messenger," the Crawleys say, mouths moving in time. "It is. Water'll ruin it, or really determined, you know. The little things. Mice."

Having presented this new perspective, the Crawleys resolve into a single demon.

Aziraphale blinks.

Encouraged, Crawley ploughs on, "Or spilled wine, or too much sun, or- or- or, uh..."

As one winged and seriously unsober supernatural entity, they glance at the red sparks interspersed among the pale stars and wince, together, like a girl who has just found fire ants crawling around in her bowl of rice.

Crawley gives up on the list as unacceptably dangerous territory and helps himself to more wine.

They have eliminated quite a few conversation topics like this already. Aziraphale didn't know they even had that many things to skirt around in the first place. It's quite educational, in a horrible sort of way.

"Yes," Aziraphale says. "But- thererr always books. Bein' written. Always, books. 'n humans don' like hurting books. Issa thing they have. 'n books, it's like, they want to stay, 's what they're for, to stay. Important."

Crawley seems amused by this. "Point," he says. "A book is a book, right enough."

Aziraphale does not know how to tell him how very wrong he is. He kneads his eyes.

"Still, bad luck, this," Crawley continues, oblivious. "Will you be paying a visit to old Julius?"

"No-o," Aziraphale says wearily. "Wasn't im, just the. The wind. He meant for his things, his boats to burn, is all, then, the wind."

"_Angels_," Crawley sighs. He starts to say something else, then stops. Aziraphale slumps onto his shoulder with a little oof, and he shifts accommodatingly, by demon standards, which is to say he doesn't actually elbow Aziraphale off. The flesh of his upper arm, through the toga, feels layered, a little brittle but at the same time yielding, like stacked pages. Aziraphale does not sleep much, unlike Crawley; he is fairly scrupulous about his job. He used to nap, though, at the Library, his cheek squished up over hieroglyphic dreams.

"Where were you? When it started?" Crawley asks.

"Doon' good works," Aziraphale mumbles. "Other side of of the, thingy, world."

"Right," Crawley says. "Not near my territory, I hope?"

Aziraphale doesn't bother to acknowledge this. There is still, thrilling somewhere below his abused liver, the urge to spread his misery around. It's still allowed, in these days. He has half a century until the religion becomes officially all about mercy and love. He could. What?

Nothing.

There's also very little wine left in the jug.

Crawley signals to the bartender for a new amphora, but it won't last longer than this one did, if Aziraphale has his way.

On the other hand, he considers, nothing does. Not in the end.

"All gone," he says wetly, into Crawley's sleeve. Crawley fingers his hair, absently, and nods. Again. Again.


End file.
